A new study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, has shed new light on a genetic disease known as Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS)—a condition in which patients show mental and developmental delays, short stature, early onset blindness, extra digits on the hands and feet, kidney abnormalities and obesity.

The lowly and simple roundworm may be the ideal laboratory model to learn more about the complex processes involved in repairing wounds and could eventually allow scientists to improve the body's response to healing skin wounds, a serious problem in diabetics and the elderly.

In a development that sheds new light on the pathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a team of Whitehead Institute scientists has identified connections between genetic risk factors for the disease and the effects of a peptide toxic to nerve cells in the brains of AD patients.

Caenorhabditis elegans is a species of parasitic roundworm in the Nematoda phylum. It can be found in temperate regions, in many different areas of the world. It prefers to reside in nutrient rich soils. Its scientific name is derived from the Greek terms Caeno, meaning recent, rhabditis, meaning rod-like, and the Latin term elegans, which means elegant. It was first named by Maupas in 1900, but was not classified in the Caenorhabditis subgenus until 1952 by Osche.
Caenorhabditis elegans...

A pivoted catch designed to fall into a notch on a ratchet wheel so as to allow movement in only one direction (e.g. on a windlass or in a clock mechanism), or alternatively to move the wheel in one direction.